Today's Opinions

Kingston is a wonderful place to walk if you just want to get exercise along the lakefront.
But if you ever find yourself trying to cross busy Kentucky Street on foot — watch out.
Last week a teenage girl was struck by a car as she was trying to do just that. While her injuries didn’t seem to be life-threatening, the accident could have been deadly.
Even at well-designated major intersections like Race Street at Kentucky Street, pedestrians are dangerously pitted against motorists.

For more than 25 years, Jonathan Foust was a special kind of trooper — one of those rare officers who was so polite you were likely to thank him for the speeding ticket he handed you.

“He never saw a person he didn’t like. He was always ready to do what was asked of him,” said Trooper Teresa Brown, who not only worked with Foust on the Tennessee Highway Patrol, but she also graduated from Rockwood High School with him.

Gentle reader, we suspect that you, like we, despite wishing it were not so, share a certain prurient interest in the pecadillos of the rich, the famous, and most of all, the powerful.
So it is that we have followed the reports of the egregious behaviour of IMF chief, Dominique Strauss Kahn, formerly considered most likely the next president of France, and his assault on the housekeeper in the luxurious New York hotel, Sofitel.

I want to apologize for not being able to attend the “Meet the Candidates” at Killefer Park on May 15.
I unfortunately had obligations at work that I had to attend to.
I am part of the working class, which I am sure that most of Harriman can relate with. However, just because I had obligations at work, I don’t want the people of Harriman to think that I don’t care.
I have a plan for Harriman that I want the people of Harriman to be aware of before the main election, which is June 7.

I know you’ll get to the real story behind the young Beard woman – seven months pregnant and missing for more than 18 years.
I pretty much know the three parties who did it or had it done.
Why, with the other information, didn’t someone look into this at the sheriff’s office?
I called everyone they told me to so I can tell them what I know, and I haven’t heard a thing back from anyone. What do you think?
M.M. Gorham
Kingston

By GENE POLICINSKI
First Amendment Center
Freedom of speech might logically seem to apply the same way whether the speech takes place on the street corner or on the Internet.
But that basic First Amendment premise is as yet unsettled in our new Web world. An intricate set of laws and judicial opinions on free speech and defamation has evolved over several centuries, from a system that existed mainly to protect the elite from criticism to one that enables anyone to seek compensation for what they see as unfair damage to their reputation.

Back in the day … long before I met the “boss,” got into the information business and then started having children, I had hours to burn.
Outside of weekend camping trips with buds, some shade-tree mechanic work on my old mini-bike and homework projects, I had a special passion.
I suppose what it really boiled down to was my tendency to choose to escape from the humdrum of every day life.
I liked to read.
And I often could be found wearing out my library card at
C. Bascom Slemp Memorial Library.

We loved a solid gray cat named Smoky. Just a cat, you may say, just another cat. But he became a family member about nine years ago.
He’d been in a fight for his life. His left eye was swollen with infection. He was a mess and skinny.
Doug, my husband, took him to the vet and had him fixed up and “fixed.”
On May 11, Smoky wanted out, and as usual, Doug called out to me, “‘Smokes’ is out.”